You Can Blog It Up

The Shortstop Song

Around the time the Royals acquired Yuniesky Betancourt, I began wondering what it would be like if they actually had a good shortstop. After all, they've never really had a star shortstop to call their own. There was a good year by Jay Bell in 1997 and Mike Aviles in 2008, but that's really it. Then I realized that if they actually did get their own Derek Jeter or Troy Tulowitzki, it would be a kind of Twilight Zone nightmare for the player, who would be inescapably trapped in a world of losing—at least until arbitration or free-agency. Until then, it would be futile prayers to Buddy Biancalana for salvation. In that moment, "The Shortstop Song" was born. I wrote it very much with the BP audience in mind, and I hope you enjoy it—you can stream or download it at the link above, along with other tunes I've written or collaborated on.

...DPOTD entries, much delayed by my father's illness (which is ongoing, a good thing given the alternatives) will return later today.

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Steven Goldman is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Click here to see Steven's other articles.
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Speaking of the Royals, I can't get past their decision to demote Alex Gordon in favor of Chris Getz. Gordon had a sub-.200 BA, yes, but with an above-.360 OBP, and an insanely low .227 BABIP.

Is NOBODY in the front office capable of looking at those numbers and saying "Gee, perhaps Gordon is being victimized by a small amount of bad luck - after all, 31 AB is a pretty small sample size to be judging somebody with his supposed talent."?

Too bad there's no way to quantitatively determine how many potentially talented players that teams like the Royals have ruined by mismanagement.

"Is NOBODY in the front office capable of looking at those numbers ..."?"

I assume you meant that question to be rhetorical, but in case not, the answer is, no, of course not. Nobody in the Royals front office has a clue what BABIP is. I'd be shocked if there's anyone who can define OBP. "Uh... Other Baseball Player?"

old school baseball is more qualitative than quantitative. they probably use scouting report on skillset, on the notion of "where the player is" as the basis of their decisions. of course, qualitative methods can only get you so far, especially in baseball where production comes in different modalities.